hey all,
alright, the situation is this...
my car was making a sort of clanging/rattling noise from the left head (firewall side) only during acceleration, more so at low rpm. so before i went getting dirty and removing the neccesary parts i took a real good look and listen, and im positive its coming from the timing chain area for the left head.
as of rightnow i have the upper timing chain cover off, and there is play in the chain, and the tensioner isnt tightening the chain.. so since its hydraulic, and i have had the car not running for a week, is this the reason the tensioner is backed off??
i also took the right timing cover off, and its chain was tight...
so is the left upper chain tensioner causing my loose chain, or did i just loose pressure from the week the car sat in the garage??
any help greatly appreciated..

Mark

 

it is possible, that it drained down completely but not likely IMHO
that tensioner would run you $36 in case you were wondering.

 

With 48 post under your belt I would assume you have check and ruled out the VTC before tackling the timing chains. Any adverse tapping, rattling, pinging noise coming from a VE it's probably safe to assume it's the VTC's. But since you are questioning your timing chain here's my opinion. Unlike the pressure side of a fuel system, the pressure side of the lube system isn't the same. When you shut of the engine you will still have static fuel pressure in the lines, unlike the engine you will not have static oil pressure once the motor is tunred off.

Why one uuper chain is tighter than the other, I don't know. One of you hyd tensioners could be sticking in the tension/tight position which is causing the upper chain to remain tight even after the engine is off. If there's a plus side it's better than being stuck in the loose/slack position.

I don't know how many miles you have on your engine, but when I had my chains (3) tensioners (2) and guides (many) off at 113K I was pleasantly surprise on how good they looked. At that point I knew I had many, many more miles to go before they go bad, with proper maintenance of course.

MIKE

 

hey mark,
funny thing....when i got my max, it was making the same noise as well. turns out the tensioner had failed/was failing. $36 like Bryan (am I right, interwebautosalesparts-guy ) plus overnight shipping and $150 in labor and i was on the road happy again. It was also the same one you're talking about..top, left rearmost if i remember correctly. The chain was also loose at the top but tight below. I can look up more details if you want. Overall, I don't think it's a "major" deal especially since you've got the timing chain cover off. If you have an fsm, you're groovy. Also check out jerryromenissan.com and go to their parts department. Locate the tensioner and you will find lots of diagrams there that would prove helpful. Good Luck getting her on the road real soon and let's know how it goes!

Oh and Mike (Candiman) the chains would most likely be fine, but believe me when I say even if you have never heard vtcs, you will definitely know that this is the chain slapping against the valve cover. It is that loud, obvious and not usually constant. And did you notice we have the same amt of posts!! freaky!!

 

thanks guys, youve been a great help.
the noise is drastically different than the VTC's, thats fo'sure.. i didnt know what was wrong when the noise started, but i knew it wasnt good. and if i could have explained the noise a little better, everyone would understand what were talking about..sorry..

ill post back for the outcome..
thanks again.

Mark

 

in either case, the timing chain definitely shouldn't have slack in it.. if it does, that means the cams are not aligned properly. probably won't cause damage, but it's definitely not helping in power having the valves opening and closing at the wrong times.

when I was tearing my heads down, I did notice that if I removed the tension and turned the engine, the cams on either head would jump a little bit as the intake cam lobes were on the downhill side... it would snap forward about 10 degrees and leave about 1 tooth worth of slack in the chain between the intake and exhaust cams.

 

yeah, i hear what your saying matt...i was defenetily losing some power from the condition.... and the slack has probably been there way before the noise ,as the tensioner most likely slowly lost pressure, thus slowly giving up slack...im anxious to get my car back after the repairs...
thanks for the input...